These are the words that I spoke yesterday at Jay's memorial service. It was a beautiful service with two auditoriums filled beyond capacity with Jay's family and friends. I was honored to be a part of an afternoon spent remembering one of the best guys to ever walk this earth.
Sometimes words pale beside the greatness of a person—especially someone as great, as kind, and as memorable as the man we know as Jay, Sergei, Serg, or Mr. Samoylenko. The strands of his magnanimous life reach into the hearts of all of us—so much so that I fear my own words can only speak to a limited view of the man you know and love so dearly. I grieve as a friend and colleague, and as hollow as I feel, I can only imagine the crushing sense of loss to Seija and Lisa who mourn a father and husband—for it is Lisa and Seija who empowered and graced the actions and gestures of Jay's life; and to Amalia and Constantine, who lost a son as real and faithful as any the world has seen; and his stepparents Steve and Karen who embraced Jay into the renewed lives of their families; and to Marina who lost a dear brother, a confidant, and sometimes, I’m sure, a savior; and to his nephews Chris and Allie, and niece, Molly, who remember an uncle would always be there to help and guide them through the steady joys and inexplicable vagaries of life, and to Aunt Irene and cousin Alex and the rest of Jay’s extended family who complete the circle of relatives gathered today to remember and celebrate Jay’s life.
The rest of us are Jay’s friends—a loyal and motley crew of students, teachers, carpenters, tutors, farmhands, academics and anti-academics, bikers, business men and women, store clerks, woodworkers, lumberman, mathematicians, townies and assorted other high and low life characters who were enriched, enlivened, embraced, and accepted for who and what we are (and often were) through the deeply egalitarian nature of Jay’s abiding acceptance of the world, the people, and the community closest to him.
I know that many of us feel robbed by time and fate because we reaped a greater share of Jay’s help and guidance than we have had the time to repay in kind; for though Jay was truly a self made man, he never tried to make his life his own; he made our lives a part of his life, and it is there where all of us—family and friends—share the expansiveness of his love and devotion to always being there when we needed him; and in the simple act of receiving his gift of time, talents, and presence we share a common bond during a hard and uncommon time.
However the news of Jay’s death came to each of you, I’m sure it came hard, unexpected—and beyond comprehension. Out of habit, I tried to put words around what had happened, but for several days everything seemed beyond putting words on a page; instead, I relied upon and leaned upon the shoulders of friends. These words are a mix of starts and stops that I can only hope somehow captures a slice of the fullness of Jay. So many of you know Jay in different, but equally compelling ways. But, I am sure that Jay—the man who spent at least three struggling and laborious hours on each individual advisor letter or recommendation—must be smiling at my own struggles to find and contain the myriad elliptical orbits of his many pursuits and passions and friendships.
Everyday, I have tried to squeeze out some words to give any kind of solace, meaning, or context to what happened to Jay. I answered the million questions from my own kids about the kind and gentle man who won't be by for dinner like he has some many times before—and Pipo (who worships the ground Jay walks on) struggling to add one more thought and make one more connection, exclaims, “Man, now I will never be able to get math!” Sometimes I just sit and can’t think, but I also smile when I remember all the times Jay and I plotted and planned our next twenty years together in the woodshop: half English/half shop—half math/half shop; you show up for practice today/I’ll show up tomorrow—and always figuring out ways to find enough jobs on the side to make enough money to get our kids through school, make tractor payments and house payments and truck payments and unexpected everything payments—and still get to be school teachers in this school we both love, with these students we both love, and with the faculty we “mostly” love—but we’d never, ever, let the system fool us; though it probably did fool Jay without even trying, for though Jay was easily the most brilliant person I knew, he was also a gentle and loving saint who accepted the good and bad, and hardship and heaven, with equal magnanimity. It seemed all the same to him to repair the barn roof on a freezing and windy wintry day then drive 200 miles to be with a sick friend in Vermont as it was to get on his beloved bike and make a quick loop around Concord and back to the farm.
In this way, Jay always did what needed to be done, but he also had his “to do lists”—and to prove it he had a daily planner so filled it looked like the rough draft of Thoreau’s journal. I have to laugh at the sheer audacity of his approach to the number of hours in a given day: Jay did not simply find the time to do things; he seemed to create time out of some primordial substance—some rare element that only he could find and work his magic alchemy: On any given day he would wake early and do whatever chores needed to be done on a farm full of horses; he’d come to school and teach math and shop classes; sneak home at lunch to help Lisa unload some 8000 tons of hay; come back to school and drive his beloved and raucous JV tennis team or cross country team to a faraway school that Star somehow felt didn’t need an airline to reach; he’d then come back to school and make it over to the Lynn’s or the Crowley’s or the Reed’s, or Billings, or Grants, or Antonitis’s or all of them and half of CCHS to tutor in math—and life; then maybe come by our house for a plate of spaghetti and a couple of stories; and then make it to Concord Academy to pick up Seija who would be staying late to study at her school, and finally back home to Lisa and the warmth of the family and farmhouse he loved so dearly.
As diligent as he was about the details of his obligations to, and the respect he had for, community and tradition, he also had his own eccentric slant on things—a slant that illumined an insightful and iconoclastic thoughtfulness about everything life could put in a person’s way. Jay would start so many conversations by resting his chin in his palm, begin nodding slowly and say, “What I can’t figure out is….” But then he would slowly work out a meticulous solution to a particular problem of life with the same ease that he would lead kids through the elegant mathematical formulas scribbled on his whiteboard—and somehow he fooled you into thinking that it was you who figured out the problem, and he just happened to be there; for Jay was a teacher who taught kids, not classes; he was a friend who came to you, not the party, but above all, he was a husband and father whose every motion of the day was meant to help Lisa and Seija, not himself.
And Seija—I don’t need to tell you about the awesomeness of your dad; I can only say to you and show you what I have heard and seen from him. Every day I would make my way over to the shop to teach my fourth grade shop class, and I would plop myself down on the couch in your dad’s office and plead with the crowds of over-eager boys lugging planks of pine and poplar, tape measures and dangerously sharp hand saws to your dad’s office door, and I would plead, “Can’t you just give me my Mr. Samoylenko time?” Because there has always been something soothing and calming about simply hanging out with your dad. Usually I’d start by telling him my latest joke, and he’d always laugh—just because it was a joke, not because he got it, for as I’m sure you’d agree, with his utter lack of guile or deceit, your dad could never tell a joke for the life of him.
And as I sat there, he would rearrange your picture on his desk and weave you into the narrative of his day:
And I have never heard a father tell so many stories about a daughter, or worry about every detail of a daughter’s life, or to put so much faith in a daughter’s ability to amaze, for he not only loved you and adored you, but he admired everything about you—and it was so much more than stubborn fatherly pride; it was an awe of everything you are and everything you have accomplished—and everything you will be. Your dad may be a guiding polestar, but you are his universe—and that will never ever change.
And Lisa—Jay will always be the husband and friend that only you knew in his completeness, and as with all other reports of husbands to their wives I should probably measure my heaping of his praises with other healthy doses of reality, but I know, even more than his love and commitment to you, was his faith in you to get through all the challenges of raising and keeping a family, keeping a farm, and keeping it all together, most especially in this most trying of years. I remember coming in the shop one morning right after your leg was broken in a riding accident, and Jay was shaking his head: “Oh, goodness gracious, [this being the coarsest language Jay would ever use] there is no way Lisa is going to stay in the house and rest her leg the way she should.” Later, after going home to check on you, he came back into the shop shaking his head again and laughing in his understated way: “Lisa was in the barn teaching a lesson.” He said it with such a natural and affectionate pride in your spunk and determination not to be sidelined when there was work to be done or challenges to be met. Working together you built an amazing and beautiful farm, and in the same way you, cultivated, nurtured, and sustained an amazing and beautiful family.
During the past week and a half, I have had so many friends say, “Though I didn’t know Jay well, he was just so comfortable to be with and talk to and be around.” And, even if you feel like you did not know him well, he knew you. It doesn't matter if he only taught you in one class or coached you in one sport, or stood with you around the horse ring, or built that horse ring with you, or guided you through quadratic equations, Jay knew you—he knew the deep and intricate subtleties of what made you be you. He also had a gift for remembrance and a love for telling stories about life and friends (often some very funny stories about his friends) and so it is an even larger myth that we shouldn't laugh and tell our own stories today—for, more than anybody, Jay would not want somberness to rule over this time together—though neither would he ever want to be the center of attention and have stories told about him that he couldn’t deny, refute or challenge with his laconic and self-deprecating wit, but it is hard for me—and I am sure for you—not to remember this really fun, interesting, and engaging guy who somehow managed to make every day with him a better day for us.
With every story told there are a hundred unspoken. I wish we had the time to tell them all. We will live better and more perfect lives if we remember Jay not simply as an amazing man, but as a parable to guide the actions of our own lives; for out of the tears, the hurt, the anger, the confusion, and utter sense of loss, Jay will always rise as a beacon and inspiration as a good person and good friend who lived a good life for good reasons. Sometimes the world takes one to teach many, and that is too true right now, so I know I will always be a better person because of Jay. How can I not? How can we not?
Jay was a seed planted in our lives, and it is up to us now to bear the fruit of Jay's life into eternity.
Thank you for listening; thank you Lisa and Seija, and thank you Jay.
~Fitz
7/31/2011
Wow, Fitz. I never even met this man and I am touched by your words. That was beautiful.
Posted by: Joy Walsh | August 01, 2011 at 06:20 PM